DIANA MALLORY 413

*mindt unsnmmoned and shattering. Her face in :ho
moonlight, her voice in the great words of her promise—-
* all that a woman can ! '—that wretched evening In the
House of Commons when he had finally deserted her,—
a certain passage with Alicia, in the Tallyn \voods»~~these
images quivered, as it were, ihrougli nerve and vein, dis-
abling and silencing him,

But presently, to his astonishment, Diana began to
talk, in her natural voice, without a trace of preoccupa-
tion or embarrassment. She poured out her Is test recol-
lections of Ferrier. She spoke—brusUng away her tears
sometimes, of his visit in the morning, and his talk as he
lay beside them on the grass—his recent letters to her—-
her remembrance of him in Italy.

Marsham listened in silence. What she said was new
to him, and often bitter. He had known nothing of this
intimate relation which had sprung np so rapidly between
her and Ferrier. While he acknowledged its beuiity and
delicacy, the very thought of it, even at this moment,
filled him with an irritable jealousy. The new bond had
arisen out of the wreck of those he had himself broken;
Eerrier had turned to her, and she to Fenier, just as he,
by Ms own acts, had lost them both; it might be right
and natural; he winced under it—in a sense, resented
it—none the less.

And all the time, he never ceased to be conscious of
the newspaper in his breast-pocket, and of that faint
pencilled line that seemed to burn against Ms heart.

Would she shrink from him, finally and irrevocably,
if she knew it ? Once or twice he looked at her curiously;
wondering at the power that women have of filing and
softening a situation. Her broken talk of Ferrier was
the only possible talk that could have arisen between
them at that moment* without awkwardness, without
risk. To that last ground of friendship she could still